THE CLOSING MESSAGES.—No. 13.
By R. F. Cottrill
BABYLON is not the Roman Catholic church alone. 1. The name, confusion, does not represent one undivided church. Rome stands conspicuous as the head and representative of all this apostasy and confusion in the Christian world; but this church alone cannot fill the entire picture. If she stands at the head of the anti-christian family, as the mother of harlots, other churches that follow in her footsteps must fill the place of daughters. If she has no harlot daughters, she is not the mother of harlots. Hence, a single apostate church, which is a unit the world over, cannot fulfill the prophecy. The true church is plurality in unity—many members and many separate congregations in one body. The false church is unity in plurality—one in apostasy and corruption, but composed of many discordant bodies. Hence, Babylon, confusion, is her proper and comprehensive appellation. But it is worthy of remark, that the reproach of Babylon is not in the name. Emerging from the darkness of papal errors, when for centuries the Scriptures had been hidden from the people, the churches of the Reformation, in searching for truth buried deep beneath the rubbish of tradition, as truth after truth was exhumed, were almost necessarily divided and in confusion. But as light increased, the established churches should have yielded their creeds and accepted the truth. Churches were born in Babylon, but not born harlots. They were pure in infancy, living to the light they had, and God blessed them. He would have healed them if they would be healed—if they would walk in the increasing light. Pure in youth, it is the course they take in riper years which determines their character. Rejecting advancing light and choosing the course of the corrupt mother, is what constitutes them harlots. And it is not until the last effort to heal Babylon has failed, that the people of God are led to forsake her. 2. The fall of Babylon is a moral fall, and not her destruction; for after her fall she becomes the habitation of devils, the hold of every foul spirit, and the cage of every unclean and hateful bird. Then the people of God are called out of her, that they partake not of her sins, and receive not of her plagues. Then, having filled up the cup of her iniquity—her sins having reached to Heaven—her plagues come suddenly upon her, and she is utterly destroyed. God’s people are in her and are called out after her fall and escape her destruction; hence, it is a moral fall—a point in her apostasy where God abandons her, the spirits of devils rush in to fill the place of the Spirit of God, and worldly, unconverted persons flock in and make her a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. When did the church of Rome meet with such a fall? If she ever did, it was long before the days of Luther, and before those long centuries of bloody persecution that preceded the Reformation. Hence, Luther lived hundreds of years too late to announce the fact that the Spirit of God had abandoned the church of Rome, and given her over into the hands of the devil. That point she had reached before the Papacy was established. Therefore the announcement of her fall should have been made before the martyrdom of the saints at her hand. But where does the prophecy place the announcement of the fall of Babylon? Just before the second coming of Christ, even after the proclamation of the hour of God’s judgment came. Rev. xiv, 6–14. Those promised proclamations never were made to the world—the prophecy never had its fulfillment—till within the present century. But the fall of Babylon was distinctly announced in 1844. Hence, the announcement of the fall of Babylon must have reference especially to the daughters, instead of the mother, since it must have been the youngest and least corrupt of the family who were given over as irreclaimable at that point of time. And I would suggest (making no one else responsible) that the repetition in the announcement makes it sound very much like the announcement of a fatal relapse after a partial recovery. As though, after the great Roman apostasy, the Reformation promised well for a cure; but when the reform churches rejected the good news of the everlasting kingdom at hand, the last resort and the only thing that could heal their dissensions and make them one in Christ Jesus, the last hope was gone, cherished expectation was crushed, and, as if a second fall had sealed her doom, it is said, Babylon is fallen! is fallen!! 3. If the church of Rome alone is the Babylon of Revelation, then the people of God are found in that church just before the great day of wrath and the second coming of Christ. But is that the case? Are the mass of real Christians to-day in the church of Rome? Doubtless our Protestant churches would claim their full share of these, but the people of God are in Babylon just before her plagues come which terminate in her utter destruction, and the only way for them to escape this ruin with her, is to forsake her. The place where they are when the Judgment messages are announced will not retain them, but they will leave it as Lot left the doomed cities of the plain. May God be merciful to them, as he was to the family of Lot (Gen. xix, 16), that they may escape the storm of vengeance which is about to descend upon the great city of confusion. And let those who have started to flee “Remember Lot’s wife.” R. F. COTTRILL.